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Westminster Model Or Westminster Muddle? a Term in Search of a Meaning

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Westminster Model Or Westminster Muddle? a Term in Search of a Meaning THIS IS DRAFT WORK - PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHORS Westminster Model or Westminster Muddle? A Term in Search of a Meaning Paper to 12th Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians Wroxton College, Oxfordshire, 25-26 July 2015 Meg Russell and Ruxandra Serban Constitution Unit, Department of Political Science, University College London Contact: [email protected] Abstract Those working in parliamentary studies will be well acquainted with the term Westminster model', which continues to be widely used in both the academic and practitioner literature. But closer examination of this term suggests significant confusion about its meaning. It began as a descriptor for the UK political system, and gradually developed a broader meaning in comparative politics, to include a 'family' of Westminster model countries. More recently it has become associated with Arend Lijphart's widely cited work which uses the model as an ideal type, representing centralised, majoritarian government. In this paper we follow Giovanni Sartori's advice for 'reconstructing' a social science term whose meaning may be unclear, by reviewing its use in the recent literature. We find that many authors use the term without definition, while those who do provide definitions suggest a large (and sometimes conflicting) set of attributes associated with the model, and a set of countries which frequently do not demonstrate these attributes. Some authors have suggested variants such as "Washminster" or "Eastminster" in order to reflect this diversity, while others have suggested that the term should be seen as a 'family resemblance' rather than a classical social science concept. But our analysis suggests that the term no longer meets even the - relatively weak - requirements for family resemblance. We therefore suggest that, far from being a model, the term simply induces muddle - and it is therefore time for it to be retired. Introduction Most of those working in legislative studies, and many working more broadly in the field of politics, will be familiar with the term 'Westminster model', which appears frequently both in the academic and practitioner literature. But to what extent is there consistency in its application? If the term 'Westminster model' is put under the microscope, can we actually be sure what it means? And if not, does it really serve any useful function? Far from being a 'model' in legislative studies in any true sense, might its primary function be to induce 'muddle' instead? These are the questions addressed in our paper, which is based on analysis of uses of the term 'Westminster model' and its equivalents in the academic literature since 1999, when it notably featured in the second edition of Arend Lijphart's widely-cited book. We find that, while the term frequently occurs in the literature, it is often unclear how authors interpret it, and it quite commonly appears without any definition at all. Where definitions are given they are often partial, divergent, and even mutually contradictory. A dominant interpretation of the term - akin to Lijphart's (1999) majoritarian democracy - could probably be said to exist, but this could be defined far more parsimoniously and with much reduced risks of confusion. We thus propose that use of the term 'Westminster model' should be abandoned in comparative politics, and more precise terms put in its place. The paper proceeds as follows. First, we explain our starting point - in terms of the roots and general uses of the term 'Westminster model' - and review the literature on concept formation in political 1 THIS IS DRAFT WORK - PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHORS science, to consider what expectations we should have of a useful political science term. Next, we briefly outline our methods. The substantive part of the paper is then structured around three key questions. First, to what extent does the academic literature define the Westminster model at all? Second, where the term is defined, what do authors suggest that it means and how much consistency is there between these definitions? Third, having determined (as far as is possible) what the Westminster model is thought to mean, where can it be considered to exist? Here we review the attributes of countries commonly cited in the literature, but also other countries displaying attributes associated with the model. Finally, we review our findings. We conclude that the Westminster model does not even meet the relatively weak requirements of a 'family resemblance' concept, and thus its use in comparative politics risks confusing more than it illuminates. Context The term ‘Westminster model’ will be familiar to most who work in political science, and likewise to many legislative practitioners. Linked by various authors to Walter Bagehot’s (2001[1867]) exposition of the ‘English’ constitution (e.g. Rhodes, Wanna and Weller 2009) it did not actually appear in his text, but served – at least initially – as a convenient label for the system that he described. Over time it came to be used increasingly in a comparative context to describe countries influenced by the British system, and is now often used to link a set of ‘Westminster model countries’, ‘Westminster democracies’, or indeed members of a ‘Westminster family’. Yet a superficial reading of recent literature – of both an academic and a practitioner kind – suggests at least some confusion about what the term actually means. The Oxford English Dictionary offers little clue: the term 'Westminster model' appears only once, within the more generic entry for ‘Westminster’, citing a classic text by De Smith (1961) on ‘Westminster’s export models’. There is no implication that this is its earliest use; though a search of Google books since Bagehot’s text was published shows that references to the term did indeed grow sharply in the early 1960s (Figure 1). De Smith (1961: 3) himself took care to point out that ‘[t]he Westminster model will never be a legal term of art, and the political scientist may wish to handle it circumspectly’. But this clearly did little to discourage its subsequent popularity. Figure 1: Occurrence of the term ‘Westminster model’ in English language texts published 1867 – 2008 and captured on Google books Source: Google Books Ngram Viewer (http://books.google.com/ngrams), generated 6 July 2015.1 2 THIS IS DRAFT WORK - PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHORS More recently the Westminster model idea received a boost through the attention of comparativist Arend Lijphart, at a time when (Figure 1 suggests) its fortunes might have otherwise been flagging. Lijphart’s now classic comparative text Democracies (1984, with over 3000 citations on Google scholar), and its later revision as Patterns of Democracy (1999, approaching 7000 citations), proposed the distinction between two ideal types, of 'majoritarian democracies' on the one hand versus 'consensus democracies' on the other. Throughout both texts, Lijphart uses the term 'majoritarian democracy' interchangeably with 'Westminster model', and he cites Britain as 'both the original and the best-known example of this model' (1999: 9). As will be familiar to many readers, his system is based on 10 indicators: five on the 'executive-parties' dimension (e.g. electoral system, party system, presence or absence of coalition government) and the others on the 'federal-unitary' dimension (e.g. degree of territorial decentralisation and presence or absence of bicameralism). In some respects this added a degree of precision to what was previously a rather loose term, but on the other hand - at Lijphart's own admission - these ideal types did not precisely apply in any country. Most notably, unicameralism was considered one facet of majoritarian democracy, while Britain has a bicameral parliament (though Lijphart judged the House of Lords to be weak). Other authors have recently given some attention to the disparate meanings of the Westminster model in a comparative context. Most notably Patapan, Wanna and Weller (2005), and Rhodes, Wanna and Weller (2009) have explored 'Westminster legacies', particularly in Asia and the Pacific region. Their review of various texts from De Smith to 2002 (summarised in Rhodes , Wanna and Weller 2009: 8) concludes that the term encompasses various constitutional features and beliefs, and has various functions: serving for example as an 'institutional category', 'legitimizing tradition' or 'political tool'. They explicitly rule out developing 'a set of institutions that can be established as an ideal model, against which the degrees of deviance [from the model] can be calculated for each country', considering this 'possible but… rather sterile' (ibid: 224). Patapan, Wanna and Weller (2005: 2) likewise 'reject the notion of an idealised Westminster model as of limited analytical value', instead suggesting that the 'Westminster model… provides a set of beliefs and a shared inheritance'. Despite the lack of precision in its definition, these authors - like many others - continue to use the term to frame their work. But this seems problematic. If a term in frequent use in the comparative politics literature has unclear or multiple meanings, this can surely only serve to confuse. In recent years other such terms have been put under the microscope. For example, Judge (2003: 501) questioned the utility of the term legislative 'institutionalisation', arguing that on examination of the literature 'there is little agreement as to exactly what its defining core characteristics are'. More recently Cheibub, Elkins and Ginsburg (2014) used data from the Comparative Constitutions Project to challenge assumptions about the package of attributes commonly associated with presidentialism and parliamentarism. What links these exercises is a combination of rigorous analysis of concepts with at least some use of empirical data. The Westminster model seems long overdue such a test. The starting point for many in considering concepts in comparative political analysis is the classic text by Sartori (1970), which introduced the notions of conceptual 'travelling' (across time and space), and conceptual 'stretching' (i.e.
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